The top of the homepage features an election countdown and latest polling for the five main parties.

TheSun.co.uk editor Tim Gatt said Sun Nation was aimed primarily at giving the newspaper a louder digital voice during the election. Commentators have suggested the Sun’s decision to begin charging for online content – called Sun+ – in August 2013 could diminish the political impact of its journalism online.

“We wanted to create a platform that would allow the Sun to be as loud and disruptive and influential in the digital sphere as we are in the paper during the election campaign,” said Gatt.

The site is being created by casual staff and journalists from the Sun newsroom, overseen by a “coalition of editors” including Gatt, Sun political editor Tom Newton Dunn, head of social James Manning and deputy head of publishing Dan Silver.

The site does not currently have any ads, and features no promotions for Sun+. However, Gatt said it could run ads in the future, and would generate traffic and potentially subscribers for the core Sun digital offering.

He said no decision had been taken over whether the site would have a future after the election: “We are treating this as an experiment. We wanted to be involved in the election, and we wanted to do it in a way true to the values of the Sun team.”

“At the minute, the main aim is being heard and people seeing what the Sun is saying.”

SunNation follows the launch last Summer of Redbox, a free politics-focused email from the Times, also published by News UK.

Both projects offer the newspapers a way to reach digital readers who are not paying subscribers.